04/23/24 05:25:00
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04/23 05:24 CDT Police clear out a migrant camp in central Paris. Activists say
it's a pre-Olympics sweep
Police clear out a migrant camp in central Paris. Activists say it's a
pre-Olympics sweep
By JADE LE DELEY and NICOLAS GARRIGA
Associated Press
PARIS (AP) --- French police evicted migrants from a makeshift camp in Paris a
few steps away from the Seine River on Tuesday, the latest operation in what
aid groups call a campaign of ?'social cleansing'' ahead of the Summer Olympics.
Before dawn on an unusually cold April morning, around 30 teenage boys and
young men from West Africa were awakened by police and urged to pack their
tents and belongings. Most of them were underage and in the process of seeking
residency papers.
"I was already scared but I am even more scared because I don't know where to
go," said Boubacar Traore, 16, who said he fled conflict in Burkina Faso and
arrived in France two months ago.
The operation came days after police carried out a large-scale eviction at
France's biggest squatter camp in a suburb south of Paris.
Such evictions and evacuations of migrant tent camps happen every spring after
the end of a winter ?'truce'' during which authorities put such actions on hold.
But aid groups working with migrants and other vulnerable people in the Paris
region say these efforts are intensifying ahead of the Olympics. They note that
people are being sent far away from the capital instead of being offered
shelter in the Paris region, where many asylum-seekers have upcoming court
dates.
"The authorities want to have a clean place for the Olympics Games. They don't
want the tourists to see Paris as a city full of migrants and asylum seekers,"
Elias Hufganel, a volunteer with a group serving refugees and immigrants, said
at the Paris tent camp Tuesday.
Paris police said the operation was carried out for security reasons, notably
because the tent camp was near schools.
In a nearby street stood two large buses heading to Besanon, 400 kilometers
(240 miles) southeast of Paris. Authorities proposed to relocate the young men
there and offered them housing for three weeks. But most didn't want to take up
that offer, fearing being even more isolated and with no plan after the three
weeks run out.
Traore was among those who refused to travel because he is awaiting a court
date in Paris in two days. It was unclear where he would sleep Tuesday night.
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